The
kittens were sleeping under the workbench at the back of the car
wash again. One gray, one black, they were curled together
in a perfect circle, nose to tail, belly to belly, ying and yang.
Hose in hand, Dave crouched down to look at them. He could turn the
hose on them right now, but he was more inclined to pull out his
phone and take a picture, they looked so cute. What was worse, he
wondered, being cruel or being a sap? Which was more of a weakness?

‘C’mon,
Dave. Bring that hose up front.’ Dave stood up with a sigh and went
outside, pulling hard on the reluctant hose as he went. His twin brother
Sam was inside the SUV they were detailing, vacuuming the upholstery. It
was the dog days of summer, and people were beginning to head back to
the city. Before they went, many of them brought their cars to Sam and
Dave’s makeshift car wash. The cars came in smelling of brine and fried
food, the upholstery tacky with gum, the carpets granulated with sand.
The twins worked the cars over with detergents and unguents until all
traces of frivolity were gone.

Sam pulled his head out from the foot well where he had been vacuuming.
‘That last guy gave us a good tip.’ He handed Dave a soft wedge of
folded bills. Dave liked it when the bills were well used and softened
with age. They seemed to get stronger the more often they passed hands,
unlike new bills that were crisp and stiff, but somehow brittle.
Dave took the bills and tucked them into his back pocket. Later he would
bank them, along with the rest of the day’s takings. The savings account
was in both their names, but, of course, only one of them would be going
to college in a few months time. They didn’t turn eighteen until
November, but it should be clear well before then which one of them was
going to survive.

Sam
backed out of the car and turned off the vacuum. ‘Mom called,’ he said.

‘Oh
yeah?’

‘Marcia
Grey has gone.’

‘Already? The girls only came of age last month.’ Dave felt a rush of
adrenaline flooding his muscles, his pulse beating hard against his
throat, a sure sign of a panic attack coming on. He thought about the
Grey twins, their next-door neighbours since they were all six years
old. The four of them had been inseparable. Now there were three. Soon
it would be two. Sam looked at him but said nothing. ‘How was she...’
Dave couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘Eliminated? Leukaemia. Acute. She got an infection, so that speeded
things along.’

Dave
willed himself into calmness. ‘How’s Mom?’

‘She’s
okay. She’s glad we’re both still here - for now.’

Dave
envied his brother his sanguine outlook on their fate. Sam was
cheerfully fatalistic and not given to thinking things through too much.
Not like Dave. And it somehow didn’t help to know that it happens to
everyone: born in pairs, growing together, growing apart, only one
allowed to reach adulthood. Dave and Sam were waiting for the genetic
marker to kick in, decide which one of them would survive their
nineteenth year.

Dave
turned on the hose and played the water over the vehicle while his
brother started sponging it down. ‘I never thought Marcia would be the
one to be eliminated,’ he said. Sam snorted.

‘Why, because she was the nice one? You don’t still believe that
good twin, evil twin mumbo-jumbo, do you? ’

‘Maybe
if we knew how it worked...’

‘Maybe
we will, one day. Don’t see how it would help, though. Can’t change it.’

Dave
turned off the hose and picked up a sponge. Hunkering down to clean the
hubcaps, he saw a pair of spiders busily casting a web in the wheel
arches. He used the edge of his sponge to flick them out. An insect’s
life was so short, it hardly seemed worth bringing them out in pairs
too. But there it was – Mother Nature knew best.

Can’t
change it. His brother’s
words echoed around Dave’s head. What if that weren’t true? What if one
of them were to die before the elimination? Not by accident or illness.
Killed. Dave knew all the arguments against that. The surviving twin was
always the chief suspect. If you were convicted, and you weren’t
eliminated naturally, they handed you over to the executioners. Either
way, you died. It all made sense, if your chances of being eliminated
were still fifty-fifty. But that was the great anomaly, the fact that
geneticists, mathematicians and moralists all over the world were trying
to explain – if your twin died before elimination, your chances of
survival were better than fifty-fifty. Only by a fraction of a percent,
but still better.

Dave
picked up a brush and started scrubbing the wheels. Sea salt and black
brake fluid had been baked together into an immoveable compound that
resisted everything but pure elbow grease. This was why the boys had
done so well this summer with their car wash – attention to detail. Dave
let the rhythmical movement of his arm calm his brain. Thinking about
this was getting him nowhere - the snake of logic swallowed its own
tail, and choked on it.

‘Dave,
you done yet? Mr Barrows is going pick his car up tomorrow, so we should
park it in the garage overnight.’

‘Okay,
sure. Let me just chase those kittens out before you back it in.’

Dave
ducked his head under the workbench. ‘Aw, jeez.’ The gray kitten was
still lying down, one curlicue half of a circle that was now broken. The
black kitten stood over the gray one, nudging him with his nose, not yet
realising his brother was dead. Dave scooped the black kitten up in his
hand. ‘Guess you were the lucky one,’ he said. He didn’t see the
gleaming SUV reversing towards him. Reversing and picking up speed.

---

Since
winning the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest in 2009,
Rachael Dunlop has gone on to further successes in writing
competitions and her stories have been published in print
anthologies, literary magazines and online journals. She is
currently working on a novel and can be found procrastinating
and talking about writing on Twitter
@RachaelDunlop.